Sigrún Hardarðottír has long worked with the theme of Gaia (Earth) and the affinity between human expression and natural forces. In the exhibition project Permutation(s), Sigrún presents a new instance of her interactive piece Hver Gerdi (2018), which explores two main aspects that define the Icelandic town Hveragerði. On the one hand, the geothermal activity of the area and the surface with its mutpots, and on the other, the greenhouse agriculture that has characterized the development of the town since the beginning of the 20th century. As part of the interpretation for Vasulka Kitchen Brno, the artist prepared a multimedia installation linking Icelandic nature and field research in the forests around Brno (Holedná in Jundrov or Soběšice forest), which she realized in the autumn of 2023.

The exhibition is a conversation between two different natural areas (worlds) - the flora of Iceland is characterised by resistant, low-growing vegetation, while the Czech Republic is typical for a more diverse range of plant species and leafy or coniferous forests that support a diverse fauna. Through videos, a computer program and an interactive tool/sculpture, the artist also openly invites viewers to participate. Sigrún poses a series of questions and thematizes subjective experiences of reality in confrontation with commonly presumed facts of understanding landscape, nature, and technology.

Sigrún Harðardóttir is an Icelandic visual artist working in painting, video and interactive multimedia. She studied at the Icelandic Academy of Arts and Crafts and the Rijksakademie in the Netherlands. She then went on to study at the University of Montreal. She is part of the first generation exploring the media of video and was part of a student group that initiated a program providing access to audiovisual equipment and production. She taught visual effects and interactive art at the Icelandic Academy, and participated in interactive presentations of artists such as Steina and Woody Vasulka and Gary Hill at the Vasulka Chamber, the National Gallery of Iceland nobo at the LÁ Art Museum in Hveragerði.

Curator: Jennifer Helia DeFelice, Viktória Pardovičová

House of Arts Brno